A Single Flame
by a vestige of peace
Summary: It was an accident, but she is glad. So she sits on top of the tower, and tries to reach across the chasm while he watches her with a broken heart, caught in the shards of glacial eyes. D/G Roughly following the 6th book.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Obviously, I do not own Harry Potter, and/or any other published work, since I am writing on fanfiction. **

No one would listen  
No one but her  
Heard as the outcast hears...

Phantom of the Opera- No One Would Listen

**----**

**I**

**----**

It was another one of those nights.

The moon shone icy and unblinking from her solitary perch in the dead heavens. The feeble whispery strays that the stars cast made the frightening world of darkness below seem murkier, alive.

_Demons slithering, waiting-_

Wisps of sparkling mist twisted and wound around the endless field of treetops making them look like they were breathing. Like the night had a shadowy spirit of its own, wafting through everything, planting its seed of dread....

A cool breeze twined around Ginny's legs, fluttering the ends of her shirt and snaked up underneath to circle around her waist. She shivered on her precarious seat at the Tower's ledge, but managed to remain still, afraid that she might lose her purchase and tumble soundlessly into the luring arms of the shadows. Closing her eyes against them, Ginny felt the air inflate the flannel material and flap the edges against her sides, playfully. Like the feeble and unsuccessful jokes of a well-meaner at a funeral, Ginny felt it's effort wasted, as the icy caress traced flinching bumps, traveling up her rigid spine like long bony fingers and awoke, instead, the biting chill of unforgettable memories.

Bundling the blanket that she had dragged out of the dormitory window with her around herself more firmly, Ginny bit the inside of her mouth, trying to make herself as small as possible inside the worn crochet.

Curling her toes inside frayed slippers, Ginny swallowed a long suppressed sob, closed her eyes again, and prayed that the murky, breathing demons would not reach her up here.

-|||-

Draco crushed the rich, crackling parchment into a ball in his fist, bursting through the empty common room, and out onto the stony corridor outside. Almost instantly, the warmth of the haphazardly strewn blankets on his bed, and the merry fire crackling in the dormitory fled from his skin, and he was left with a cramping cold that made him wonder if he had not suddenly acquired the same elemental compositions as the stones around him.

Squeezing on the now hard ball of paper in his hand, the forming points stabbing into the soft flesh of his palm, Draco stalked through the hallways blindly, a helpless anger buzzing through his veins. His head hurt, and the unrelenting toll of too long went without sleep beat insistently against the backs of his eyeballs.

He was so _tired. _

He felt translucent; like the crumpling, expensive letter in his hands, covered in bold, curling letters full of so many hollow nothings. Like his father, like the Dark Lord. He was an exquisite stroke of ink, devoid of any meaning.

And with each day that passed, it seemed to him, that the emptiness of all that he was, all that he had to be draped over him, like a thousand weightless drops, joined into an ocean, drowning his paper soul.

Choking, he sometimes wondered at how he could still breathe.

The letters, the well crafted words, the dreams- the waking, living nightmare; the dull, unrelenting ache in his forearm- Draco wished for a moment- one inconsequential unit of time- for it to all stop. But no matter how hard he wished, how much whiskey he managed to sneak in from Hogsmeade, how many others he tried to beat down around him, to try and eek out the same relish that his father and his friends enjoyed; to feel it's tangy empowering sweetness on his own tongue, Draco's universe refused to go as he wished.

With every unwarranted insult, the sweet tastes of his expended fury turned dry and bitter in his mouth.

With each reminding letter from his father, from Azkaban, of what he must do, the layers of futility continued to roil and plunge him.

Bent under so much weight, Draco wondered at how he could still walk.

But if there was one thing that his father's new guests at home had taught Draco over the past couple of summers, it was that people moved on; they lived on, kept walking and breathing, even after the most horrendous tortures clawed at their nerves.

People endured. And they didn't seem to be able to help themselves. They went insane; they broke a little inside, every day. They tore their own soul, shred by shred-

-but they endured.

And the thought, deceptively, was not comforting at all.

When he had first watched his father casting the Cruciatus curse on the mudblood, collected from Diagon Alley, Draco had been rooted by the man's gasping; his twitching; his screaming. Frothing at his mouth, the keening voice that had burst from his jowls had seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him- some small endless space where even the Cruciatus could not reach.

It had grated on Draco's ears, stinging through his eyes until watery rivulets of the man's agony ran over Draco's face.

He had expected the man to die at any moment, so he had continued watching, unblinking grey eyes fixed blindly-

- _as if that was something he could do- to witness the pain without flinching and be there. To watch him die._

Draco had not thought a person so neurally exhausted could go on for so long, but the man had not stopped. The noise echoed on, bouncing on the tall glass windows, breaking through the wooden hinges of rosewood doors, and collecting, ringing, in the hollowed domes of patrician ceilings all through the mansion.

He had kept screaming; shrieking and clawing and begging- _mercy!_- until Draco had wanted to scream with him- to tell him to shut _the fuck _up!, to give up, give in, stop twitching, stop enduring, stop it stop stop stopstopstopstop-

He had wanted to scream at his father to _just kill him_.

And it had all been so... entrancing. Enthralling, in a dry throat-ed, gut-wrenching, nails digging kind of way.

Because he hadn't. And neither had the man.

Draco had sat there for the whole thing. He had watched, _without blinking_, and he had kept his aching teeth clamped on the inside of his cheek until little dents of copper lined there, dull, and undeserving. And everything- the piles of gold inside his gringott's vault; the closets of fine robes; the lusty eyes of his peers and otherwise, all the vain, blinded pleasures- _comforts-_ of his world- had come to mean nothing, all at once.

Because the man screamed on. And so did the next one, and the next, and the one after that. They all screamed; came and went, and endured- lived- because that was, apparently, what people did.

And there was not an ounce of comfort in it.

No. It was like a cold, stabbing realization, a dawning, immovable fear, of a world that has no end.

Wrestling with burdens too heavy for him, Draco stepped onto the moving staircase that landed before him without thinking.

On silent feet, he moved up towards the sky.

-\|/-

Nothing could get her here. Underneath the open, infinite sky; in the perpetual freedom of the limited, precious hours in the unbounded air, Ginny was safe.

There were no nooks, no crannies here, for demons to lurk in. Here, at the top of the tower, there was no enclosure where they could corner her. Beneath the cool, inhuman touch of the watchful stars, there was no Tom; no evil.

Because, surely, with _so much _night, so _much_ darkness, there could be no room for the excess of His darkness. Surely, here, in the cool peace of complete and perfect night; with its pinprick lights, and its chilling, endless breeze- she was secure.

Up here, she could not feel the dead clay weight that hung in her stomach every day. There was no morbid clench in her spirit, staining her inside out.

Here, where she could step over, dive to an end, nothing could chase her.

So instead, scaling the cramped castle walls, so full of hundreds of years worth of memories, every night, Ginny crouched at the top of the world and revelled at the blotting blackness that sheltered her from the onslaught of the world. Holding her breath, Ginny imagined herself disappearing, hidden from not only the view, but the thoughts of everybody, until there was nothing left to mourn. There was no fifteen year old girl with a battered heart and broken eyes running through the days, with her lungs filled with ink.

When the moon was black, Ginny would think, surely this was the closest she could ever get to death, before she died. She would close her eyes, and the wind would curled and sway around her, making her a part of the endless of sky, teasing her like a leaf caught in a breeze.

And, smiling, in its unstopping, constant breath, Ginny would hear it whispering to her that nothing could get her here.

She was safe.

Cold, vulnerable, and always on the verge of tipping over-- but safe.

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	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: Someday, I will own a piece of fiction, but Harry Potter, I promise will never be mine.**

**Author's Note:** I'm envisioning a bigger future for this story than it's original one-shot format. There is so much emotion that I can eek out of these two characters- their sorrow is beautiful, particularily Draco's in the 6th book, and I finding myself trying so hard just to capture it, and maybe even justify it through this narrative. I really, really hope that in the process I don't bore you guys! It is, after all, for the readers!

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**And if the darkness is to keep us apart  
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off  
And if your glass heart should crack  
And for a second you turn back  
Oh no, be strong  
****-"Walk on" U2**

**----**

**II**

**----**

As he prepared to step off the ledge , standing at the edge of everything, Draco caught a flash of fire.

The night closed behind him, and the dark was clotted and soft on his skin, getting in his mouth, twisting over his tongue and seeping into his lungs, pouring from him inside out. And in it, the flare of shadowed red stood out: a torch full of hope, beckoning the return of the sun.

Immediately, he took a step back. Where, but a moment ago the sheer drop off the ledge had shimmered alluringly, it darkened and deepened now. A small flicker of fear sparked inside his beaten soul, and Draco looked closer at the waving, valiant streak across the sky.

The wind swirled in a furious spurt once more and the trailing locks got caught by its lashing- first forward and then curling, and turning, it whipped a thick lock away to revea a pale, freckled shadow against the black night.

Draco took a step forward again, and stared.

It was the littlest Weasley.

Furrowing brows, head tilting, he wondered at the irony of his skirting sleep leading him to her of all people: the last soldier beyond the enemy's lines; the straggling, valiant tail of the losing fight.

Draco felt his mouth twist-

_-Like bright red hair that streamed unbound, fighting the blotting darkness of the night._

Blinking in wonder, Draco thought, _and what do _you_ hide from up here, little Weasel? W__hen all your life is unwrapped for you, and given to do with what you will?_

And just as he had finished the thought, her head turned slightly, and the shifting shadows of her hair moved from her eyes, and he saw her looking straight at him.

Dark eyes staring into silver, she curled her sadness around his question and squeezed it until he thought he had never thought something so stupid. Draco swallowed, and stared at her unwavering eyes, unable to move.

It was as if she had forged something between them in that moment; with silent eyes and lonely, misted breath. Caught unawares, Draco caught the impact of her gaze like a fist in the diaphragm- wishing, crumbling, uncloaked silver eyes widened, and before he could stop, with a intake of breath, he felt her enter.

Her sad gaze felt like a raw festering wound; like a thousand loving lies on his soul. The wind ripped through his clothing, tossing her breath across the expanse between them, and Draco almost turned his face to it, almost closed his eyes and vanished into the shadows of his own hurts.

But her blazing, coiling head of flames kept him rooted, with his head held up, over the waters.

In the dim, misty hue of the moonlight, it looked remote, tamed to a darker red; still burning; still fighting, but somehow subdued. At peace. Like the first bright light of dawn, it soothed his eyes, shining like a small beacon of beauty in a void, dreary world.

And randomly, he remembered the last lines of an old knight's tale- "and when the war was ended, there was nothing but a sea of losers everywhere."

As he stared at her unruly locks, the humming fight ground beneath his anger and self-pity took a hesitant breath, and spread through his chest like hot water. Draco swallowed and looked away, turning to leave. When he glanced back again, the hot tremors were cooled by her unwavering gaze, and instead he felt a string of longing catch against his feet, holding him still.

__:::-:::__

She had felt him there before she had actually seen him. Like a fallen star, from the corner of her eye, she saw him land on the dark slate of the castle's highest tower.

She saw him take a step towards the lip of the ledge, and she said nothing. Tom had taught her about the secrets of the night, and she had learned enough to never look into one again.

What people did under the cover of darkness was what they did not want others to see. She hid on top of a tower from a dead spirit, and he wanted to take his life back from whoever had taken possession of it. He could keep what secrets he liked; she would not look.

But then a bold wind had snaked through her throat and flipped out her frozen hair from the blanket that held it against her back. A rush of streaming russet; browns and gold and hot, bleeding red had blocked her peripheral vision for a moment. When it had tumbled down and whipped away again, he had stepped back.

He had seen her.

From beneath the shadow of a moving stray of hair Ginny flicked a quick glance- hoping to sneak one look, snatch back her small stolen secret.

The air that was entering her mouth had choked in her throat.

Returning her widened gaze back to the shivering forest, Ginny felt the image of a forlorn Draco Malfoy brand itself behind her lids.

She felt his bright eyes looking at her. Feeling a trail of confusion coiling inside her stomach, she saw his expression without looking: a broken heart caught in the blunt shards of glacial irises.

Maybe he was accusing her of not doing anything.

Maybe he hated her for being there at all.

Or maybe, he blamed her for his lack of resolve; for the trembling in his knees before they should have unlocked and he had let the shadows catch him at last.

His gaze burned through the flying curtain of her hair, coating layers of dirty blame on the phantom lines in the corner of her eyes.

The angry shadows at the base of the tower stretched to catch her by her weighing guilt.

Sighing in resignation, Ginny had turned at last, resting clear, sleepless eyes on him. Brows crinkling in uncertainty, she had wondered if she felt angry or hurt. So without thinking, without remorse, she whispered into the night: "And who chases the son of a death eater?"

_Why are _you _here?_

Even from the distance she could see his pale eyes flashing in the moonlight, so full of cracks and fissures that she wondered how she had never noticed before.

He was so different from everything around him, so different from incorporeal dark hair; dark eyes; cold, remorseless gaze that still crept at her through the fogged channel of too many years. Against the gloom of her memories, he was breaking light right after the curtain was drawn. He was moonlight; whites and silvers and pale hues of gold churned with the sharp shade of ether found only on the glinting surface of the ocean.

He was so luminescent that, in the dark, it hurt to look at him.

Fighting a wince, Ginny waited.

But immobile, and cut from moonstones, he did not answer her. Standing against the blackness that threatened to extinguish him, he looked lost and alone and she felt something achingly familiar in his stance. Gazing shamelessly from her solitary perch, Ginny looked at him, and saw someone she had never met in the day light before. Six years, and in one accidental instant, she caught sight of him with all his guards dropped.

She felt like crying.

Because for the first time, she saw _him, _and her breath caught in her throat, the chill in her spine crystallizing into solid ice.

And he had nothing to say to her, except for the naked hurt in his eyes. For the heavy dark chain that hung from his neck, caught at his wrists and knees, tainting what feeble glow he still gave off, and choked off the words in his throat.

With a clarity not allowed in the day, Ginny felt the crusty layers of her own flimsy walls; so old, so soft, so utterly useless- stripping from her body. Up here in this unfeeling, untouched realm of refuge, she stared into his unblinking eyes, allowing her own guard to go down.

Suddenly, she was eleven, all alone, and clean again; free for a moment from the vice like grip of obsession.

And looking at the Slytherin head-boy, his aristocratic flame glimmering on the astronomy tower in the distance, Ginny realized that- for now- he was none of what he pretended either. Not now, not here. Not looking like that, with the broken, haunted gloom around him.

He was just a boy. A boy, with far too much armor.

Looking away at last, Ginny sighed, pushing the image of him into that tiny bottle where she kept all of _her _secrets, and breathed in the calm of the silence, unconsciously polishing a leather-bound memory of another boy who had never felt any pain.

***

_"And who chases the son of a death eater?_"

He did not need to hear it, for he could feel the question wrought in contempt fogging the air around him, every day. He felt it stoppering his lungs, squeezing his chest, pushing against his back, his legs, his heart. And he really did not need to hear it.

But he did. Her whisper was small, and light as the flutter of a butterfly's wings, but it carried through the clear boundless air between them, and curled around his heart.

_The death Eater, of course_, he wanted to answer. _The son's father; the evil man with the stick whom you all fear from your patchy homes afar. He chases. Inside closed walls, through green ink, curt whispery voice, a hooked staff, a bottle of brandy a spell a hex an oath a green green snake that hurts and__hurts_- But, the words sticking in his throat, Draco vanished the thought entirely from his mind.

Looking at her lone, vulnerable frame, he felt the tumbling answers dribble and run dry. The cool breeze still flowed through her hair, lifting and releasing the fiery tresses and Draco imagined it slipping through her legs and catching her from her brick seat and lifting her away to float in the cold darkness like a lone autumn leaf.

He did not answer her because _surely_, she knew.

Surely she knew how it felt to be chased, to always be running. Until she was twisted and tangled into tiny knots, clamping it all behind her lips, never to tell anyone what they could not hear; what could not be told- screaming inside her own head for someone to notice- someone to see. And to always feel the truth slash at her insides a little more; until she was a little more broken, a little deader with each passing night.

She knew. He could tell.

Because there was only one way that the haunted looked: knees curled into chest, arms still and clenched, always cold and always hiding.

And she was here, wasn't she? She was hiding from the walls and the high ceilings and tight little corners on the top of a tower, wasn't she? A flickering flame, wondering which breath was its last: teetering at the edge of the world.

Surely, she knew. Surely, she hadn't meant to ask.

Draco felt her sigh rustle with the wind in his hair as her eyes slipped away from his once more. He saw the apology printed across her face, weighing down on the drapes of her suddenly subdued red hair. And Draco felt the latch holding him in place ease, and let him go.

He wondered if the world had suddenly changed.

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	3. Chapter 3

**DISCLAIMER: I no own... **

**You dance inside my chest,**

**where no one sees you,**

**but sometimes I do,**

**and that sight becomes my art **

**- Rumi**

***

**III**

*******

The next night he did not come out, but she could feel him standing in the shadows at the lip of the opening.

Like the tentative flicker of one more, barely noticeable, star in the night sky, his presence hovered beyond the slate, beckoning her, the way the stained leafs of a leather-bound diary once had.

The spidery tendrils of his breath, escaped from the fringes of the entrance swirling across the distance to join her own, and Ginny could not help it, closing her eyes, she imagined it as a leash, lodging itself inside her, bridging a rift from her loneliness to his.

In the privacy of her head, Ginny smiled, wide and free.

Opening her mouth, she let the wary caution of a thousand warnings wind through and disappear in the tentative cadence of words.

Her voice floated softly across the dense emptiness between them, beginning a climb over the generations-old walls that lined heavy, beyond the unrelenting breeze. With halting, harmless words, she tossed her stones to measure the depth of the plummeting walls, silently falling onto the distant, lined roofs below them; between them.

She told him about the forest, a safe topic, and other little nothings that she could spare throwing into the chasm- in case they should cross. With those tumbling words, she forged a leash of her own: spinning, and flexing; gaining strength and whipping through the tangible cold like a rope.

Her voice never rose from a whisper and sometimes her hair would flow around her, and hide the corners of her eyes that sought for him.

But, resisting the tickling temptation in her fingers, she would not bind it, or brush it away. Like the roaring bonfire of one stranded on an island, Ginny used it's blaze to call him out to her.

***

He started coming every night, but ashamed of every little mask, every little dance, song and act that he had to adhere to during the day, he hid in the shadows.

She spoke, and he felt the manacles on his feet give a sharp tug. His muscles coiled under his clammy skin, ready to turn, ready to step away, change his mind, go back, go away- escape the words before they took meaning. But a dormant will in his soul seemed to roll in its sleep, hand fastening around the reigns, and refusing his limbs the authority to act.

Confused at first by his own unexplainable behavior, Draco secretly felt the shame blossoming in him at being trapped by the common beauty of a Weasley. He wondered at his vanity, and when his standards had dropped, but the sentiment fell uncomfortably on his conscience, and Draco felt even more baffled.

The years of animosity sat like poison in his veins, chilling him in the mild air, probing his mind for answers as he battled with himself about leaving.

But her voice, faint and intermittently cut off, curled around the constant, scaly anger inside him, and soothed it like lapping waves over jagged stone.

Even while he felt the bitter disdain at all that she was and had ever been flickering inside him, Draco continued to stay; continued to come back. Even when there were too many people in the common room, and he felt their questioning, plotting eyes following him to the door night and night again. Even while he held onto his persona as a 'villan of the halls', and 'resident Death Eater', at nights he would feel the countless defences, excuses and glittering badges of hollow pride rust and strip away, pulling on him like a fallen angel in need of salvation, to crawl up the steps, one way or another, to see her on her tower once more.

Like this, slowly the agitation and embitterment began to loosen, an even stranger exhilaration began to take its place.

He did not respond to all that she said, but simply stayed still, and listened, until eventually, he forgot even to ask himself why.

Nights passed, uncounted, in a single hush of peace. -A hush before the storm; the quiet, bracing breath before the scream, and then one night when he remembered to ask again, it had stopped to matter, altogether. He would come, no matter what, he realized. For now, that would have to do. Like a baby learning to walk for the first time, Draco allowed the liberation to sink in with small steps. Someday, perhaps, he would question it, but in his hopeful and naive unconscious, Draco hoped that by then he would have learned to dance. For now, it did not matter.

And when it did not matter, his gaze became more daring. As time crept past, it flitted over to her perched seat more resolutely.

Her vision calmed him and thrilled him, all at once.

As he watched her, from where she could not see, a silent wind tossed and looped in the folds of her hair, and tried to carry her speech regally across. The distance which was constructed to keep them apart was too wide, and the words, on their way got lost, reaching him only in flaky wisps: full of dearth and unconscious caresses. Draco felt his heart strum feebly, inside him.

All that she threw, he watched bouncing in the sparkling, dewy slate of the ledge. He did not catch any of her attempts, and stepped always a little away when they reached too close.

But when the azure breath of the sleepless hours brought him the scent of her hair, he leaned out, the watery light of the moon touching his nose and chin. And, a dying man, he drank from air that contained remnants of the blazing life trapped in the strands of her torch.

--||--

One day, she noticed him at the Slytherin table during breakfast. There was no one in the whole hall that was paying him any attention, and as he idly played with the fork between his fingers, across the tables, she saw _him _come alive.

Ginny blinked.

A clear, phantom scent of the night sky brushed her nose, then, and Ginny stopped eating to stare, her heart filled with wonder.

It was a flash of sparkling silver in his hands that had caught her attention. But immediately after looking, Ginny found herself distracted by the much quieter sparkle of hoary shutters falling, as something cold and formidable slipped away from his unusual eyes. Lying unassumingly before him, and subjected to his ashen scrutiny was a folded slip of paper, hanging precariously from the edge of his plate.

The fork in his hand twirled smoothly on the dark green table cloth and Draco stared on.

Ginny wished she could reach out, into his thoughts. Staring at the clear eyes, so much brighter, so much harder to see in the daylight, Ginny wished that she could step through their clarity, and feel all the little breaks and flaws just beyond.

Ginny felt her head tilt to the side, and something above her diaphragm clenched twice, leaving a dull aching of sadness in its wake. Seeing him so tarnished, with the cry lodged so plainly behind his eyes, Ginny had to bit her lips to keep from letting the soft words pushing against the back of her throat from coming out.

The moving fork in his hands caught at one corner of the folded parchment and there was a clatter as his fingers let go immediately, as if they would burn. Ginny looked up just in time to catch his lids widening- just barely, and then the heads nearby were turning, inquiring-.

A sly, white hand appeared, sliding long, red-tipped fingers on his shoulder, over the rounded, tense bend and down his arm.

Ginny's breath hitched, the movement so sensual that a prickling burn enflamed her cheek.

Ginny blinked, willing herself to look away. When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring into the flat greys of a seventh year Slytherin, whom she barely knew.

***

He only caught her once, and he reverently wished he hadn't. It was so much harder climbing the endless stairs, heading for the astronomy tower every night, when he knew that she saw right through his ridiculous, pathetic little masks every day.

She had masks of her own, of course. But strewn through her deceit was a clear and very pure thread of honesty which his facade lacked.

He felt dirty when she looked at him in the daylight.

He felt like a broken, groveling nobody, who spent his nights living off the faint sounds of his enemy's breath.

Surely, he would think during the day, he was setting himself up for more hurt. Surely, he was polishing the very blade which was meant to mark his neck.

But it was too late, now. Too late to regret, to take it all back, to erase the breach of understanding between them now. Too late, and now that there was no going back, all that Draco could think of was that she watched him, and that although he did not like it, some forgotten part of him which had ceased to exist the day his arm had been burned, came alive with the knowledge**. **But true to his name, some shred of pride still held on inside him, and he refused to admit it.

Eventhough it was too late. Draco had only hoped….

He frowned. What had he hoped? That she would not recognize who her midnight visitor was during the day? That she would _pretend, _the way he did, that none of it actually happened?

That she would not know that he stood there, behind the tiled opening, every night, even though she chose to speak to him?

That…

_That- no._

Closing his eyes against the gaiety around him, Draco firmly closed the door to that particular closet shut. It did not matter what he hoped.

Because, she _knew_. And unlike him, she obviously had no qualms about their little charade, and, it suddenly occurred to him, nor was she wont to, since making peace with those morally inferior to them was the ultimate Gryffindor Dream. Feeling an inane, petty surge of anger, Draco felt the corner of his lip curl in distaste. And there he was, every night just filling her with charitable joy.

But then he remembered her serene gaze from across the table, sitting in the midst of all of her fellow Gryffindors, looking just as alone as she did on her perch against the night sky, and Draco felt a twinge of shame.

Even in his constant denial, Draco knew that his anger towards the little Gryffindor would always be misplaced. Because, though he told himself that she watched him, and that it made him uncomfortable, it was not true. Ginny Weasley did not _watch _him; she _saw _him. And in her plain, unprejudiced gaze, Draco could not help the lancing guilt that tore through him.

His anger was at his own guilt. His anger was at his inability to look her back in the eye, and answer the faith he saw in there with his frightened soul. He could not look at her, because there was nothing worthy in him to say. What could you say to someone when they saw right through you and told you that you were someone _you_ _knew _you could never be. In her silent gaze, she asked of him things that Draco had no courage left for.

And he had known when she had seen him, too- as her warm gaze had latched onto him from across the hall, he had felt it. Like a pinprick sensation in the back of his mind, a distant memory of that first night, and her sidelong gaze, so full of things he had just learned to read, had awoken suddenly.

But he had been caught unaware. The green imprint of his father's treacherous words was still burning on the sensitive pads of his fingers, and he had been staring at the parchment, waiting for its edges to curl up and hiss with its feeble, enchanted flame. His knees below the table had been shaking, and biting the inside of his cheek, Draco had willed the masses of droning students around him to not notice him. For just a moment, until he had collected himself once more.

But her peering gaze had caught the falter in his normally flawless gait, had caught him again at his lowest point, and he had not had the courage to look up and meet them. He felt it on him, inexplicable, and just as vividly as if someone had pointed a glaring torch of light right at him. Unaware, though he had been, his ears, from the moment the dreaded letter had landed on his empty plate, had searched the cacophony of mingling tones for the soft, ringing candescence of her. Opening the rolled, cream paper, his heart lodging against his larynx, Draco had unconsciously clawed at her distant voice, so full of the echoes of night air, and drawn it around him: a film of incorporeal protection to shield him from the onslaught of angry terror that threatened to spill as his eyes roved over the perfect pen strokes. So, when her voice had suddenly stopped, he had _known_.

He was so attuned to her, without knowing, that when her attention, so unexpectedly, had landed straight on his spotlight, Draco felt an uncanny sense of overexposure. Of sensory overload.

Panic.

Distantly, Draco had wondered if the same surreal connectivity alerted her of him, as well. In that vague recess of thought, he had also wondered if there was some kind of ancient Hogwarts enchantment at work.

Feeling a flood of fear, Draco willed the attention of those around him to return immediately. With what felt like enormous effort, he had resisted the urge to duck, and turn, and leave the hall as fast as possible- to avoid her gaze, avoid her recognition- _hide. _When the Malfoy mask was on, he could peer through the tight eyeholes, and look her in the face again bravely, but for that moment, he had been completely naked.

As if hearing a summons, he had felt Pansy shift in her seat beside him. Fighting the coil around his throat, Draco willed himself to breathe. He heard the sugary voice change direction as her head turned, and through sheer spontaneity of habit, the forlorn, sagging muscles of his face had tightened up, and lifted. The false hauteur returned in the form of an imperceptible pull on the corner of his mouth, a slight drooping of his lids, and like a flood, the courage spawned by relief infused the rigid muscles of his face once more.

Heart thumping in chest, Draco braced himself as Pansy's heavily scented hand lifted from her side and landing on the sensitive base of his spine, snaking its way up- candy voice still speaking-

"...Draco, darling, don't you quite agree? I really think this is the first time Goyle has come up with anything worth hearing…"

And then the creamy hand had slid over his shoulder and gave a very small, but very intentional squeeze, and he swallowed, tying the loose ends of his mask firmly into place, and finally looked up.

Wide brown eyes looking stunned stared from over the huddled benches, across the Great Hall. They were not looking at him, but the grazing long fingers stroking his upper arm. Gut twisting, Draco wondered if, from the distance, she could see the glinting ring on the white finger.

Fighting to keep his breathing as regular as possible under the scrutiny of his peers around him, as they turned one by one, awaiting his reply, he wondered if she could see the engraved _M, _shimmering just below the diamond.

Desperate to detect any change in her expression, Draco wondered since when it had started to matter if she did.

Below untamed, angry hair, her calm brown eyes blinked. When she opened them again, they looked straight back at him.

Meeting her gaze at last, Draco fought a cramp in his chest.

_It didn't, _he told himself_._

Caught up in her own thoughts, she did not manage to look away fast enough, and before she had blinked the dark orifices away again, Draco managed to catch a brewing stain of hurt dawning behind them.

Wrenching his gown aze away in a sudden, suffocating plunge of panic, Draco turned to his fellow Slytherins at last, plastering on an arrogant, dirty smile on his cracking face, and opened his mouth.

Behind drawling words, and a stiff, scornful mask, his little lying heart insisted: _it didn't, it didn't._

***

**AH! I think that is the last time I edit that chapter. I have re-read it so many time, I don't think I can even see the mistakes (no doubt covering the entire thing), anymore. Does anyone know what the difference between "unexplainable" and "inexplicable" is?**

**Please Review- I have my heart and soul in this little project, and would really appreciate anything you have to say!!! **

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	4. Chapter 4

_**Disclaimed.**_

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Well, its too late,  
Tonight,  
To drag the past out  
Into the light.  
We're One,  
But we're not the same;  
We get to carry each other,  
Carry each other...

One

**One- U2**

*******

**IV**

*****  
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_The Dark Lord is getting impatient. _

Letting out a strangled growl, Draco squeezed his fingers through his hair. He felt the dull ache spread from his temple to his thoughts, abating the frustration brewing there for an instant. He breathed, great tufts of air hissing in through his clenched teeth and back out in a rush from his nose. Opening tired eyes, Draco looked down at the unassuming parchment, already wrinkling at the edges, and shrinking with flaking black bits, and felt the building pressure of tears against his sinuses.

Biting his lip and squeezing shut his eyes again, Draco let it pass, the sudden, overwhelming wave of self-pity and futile, desperate, anger. At his feet, the letter disintegrated until it looked like it had never been; a silent affection, with the echo of a mocking laugh.

And like all things Malfoy and sinister, it burnt lingeringly- _an imprint of fate_- behind the delicate membrane of his lids. Now that he had read the message, there was no getting out.

Fighting the choking clutch around his throat, he took great, deliberate breaths to calm himself. Jaws clenched, and mouth pressed to a thin line, Draco rode it out, and when it was gone, he blinked moistened lashes open, and looked around him, braving the world anew.

He was _tired. _He longed for the solitude of nighttime.

The large eagle which had delivered the message had left shortly after he had untied the scroll from its leg. Not surprised, Drace glanced instead at where it had stood perched, so briefly, at the smooth mahogany back of the only chair in the room. There, slid to one end of the curved wood lay draped a heavy strip of green lace.

A muscle in his arm jumped, reflexively. A reply. His father expected a reply.

_The Dark Lord is getting impatient, _rang through Draco's head again.

Swallowing the bitter taste that stuck to the back of his throat, Draco wondered what exactly it was that his father expected him to say. The job would be done. It was always done as he ordered. When had Draco ever disobeyed?

For the first time since he had been very young, Draco felt the childish urge to just reply that he would not. He _refused. _That he would accept the expulsion from the family inheritance, accept a life devoid of all luxurious comforts, and refuse to do any of his sick work in recompense, anymore. But that naive fantasy of easily sought, and quickly found freedom eroded fast. If only it were so simple. If only it had been just a simple matter of expulsion.

_What will you do, father, if I refuse? When I can't take it any longer?_ he wondered, silently. _Kill me_? Surely that was not such a bad option.

But coward that he was, Draco breathed away the petulant thoughts and cleared the singing anger from his blood.

Getting up on clanking, metal legs, Draco felt his robotic instincts take him to the desk by the window, his hand reaching to rummage in the top drawer. Mind numb and taken over by painstakingly honed practice, he felt his back touch the straight chair back, and his fingers close around the quill. Mechanically, his other hand placed a fresh bottle of ink, at the top corner of the page. Green. The pungent smell curled in his nose, tugging at dusty recollections of a whispering diary, long ago; sharp, pointed letters and harsh, dragging lessons by a creeping voice in his mind, and green magic in a dingy hall, guided by a cold hand- his fathers- and another, not his father…

Draco dipped the fine end, tapped it gently against the side of the glass opening, and placed the tip at the top of the page. "Dear father," the lie slid smoothly over the soft parchment; curling letters, just like his father's, and his hand slowly gained a momentum.

The light streaming through the open, magic window teased the fine hairs on the back of his hands, aglow. Draco watched the subtle hollowing and sliding of the spaces between his knuckles as they moved, and felt the sick coil in his stomach at its queasy familiarity. How often had he written these lies, he wondered, that now even his hands had begun to resemble his father's?

The ever present strain on his shoulders rolled down his back, until he was aching. "I will be going to Hogsmeade presently, as you asked," he wrote. "The plan is coming along smoothly, nobody suspects..." Grimacing, Draco regretted the honesty in those words. Why was it, he asked himself, frustrated, that no one suspected a thing? Why was it always so easy to do what he didn't want to do? A soft memory of a midnight sky passed through his thoughts and Draco faltered. Perhaps not everything he didn't want to do, he thought.

An uncertain desperation streamed through his system. If only Weasley began to suspect him. If only Weasley could see the worst in him.

Even though nobody in the school thought the best of Draco, they were all far too blind to ever notice anything off about him. His father was smart; he was _a fucking, twisted genius_, and he had known better than to cast the imperious curse on him. With Draco, he had another kind of leverage to carry his plans; he had a carefully weaved world all set up with the loose end of the string in his hands, with all the power of threat, that he would pull. One tug, and all of Draco's life would unravel. One tug and one, by one, all the smiling gnomes in his otherwise lonely garden would topple.

And these little pawns; all these little fictitious intimacies and friends and familiars were all he had. They were the only pretense in a life devoid of reality.

And Draco was a coward. A coward living in the middle of a desert, drinking off the mirage. It was not in him to wish for the night to come, and wash his illusions away. And he would do anything, _just about, _to keep anyone from draping their shadow over his shimmering oasis. But his father would step forward eventually. The threat would only last so long; his use, unscarred, so long.

Draco was trapped.

So, at the ringing suspension of dusk, Draco waited for the sun to set.

If only his last sin would be caught. _If only Weasley would notice._

A morbid spark of hope waned in his chest. Could she be, finally, his relieved downfall, at the end of all his painstaking grace? Hands frozen, Draco watched distractedly, as a spreading blotch of green travelled through the parchment fibers, where the tip of the quill touched, unmoving.

And what would he have to do, if she did?

_Nothing, _an honest whisper answered inside his head. Nothing, because he would die. _The Dark Lord is getting impatient, _his father said, but he did not mean Lord Voldemort. Lucius Malfoy was getting impatient, and if Draco failed, he would be killed just like that. The quill caught between his forefinger and thumb dropped, clinking on metal as it fell on the ruined paper. Moving his hand to grab it back, Draco caught the glint of the inscripted ring on his finger.

_Mors et fugacem persequitur virum. _

Death pursues the man who flees, it said.

Draco's jaw tighened and the brief kindling of warmth fled from his body as if someone had snuffed out the sun. Slowly the carefully constructed shutters of his prison drew tight and hugged around him, again. Watching the lock turn with a detached fascination, Draco thought- the taunting farce of nighttime red had no place here; not in the light of day. Not in his life.

Grabbing a fresh sheet, he suddenly remembered, there were no towers in a Malfoy manor.

*******

The bell rang dull, and far away. Watching the grey fog of her dreams receding into the oncoming shadow of awareness, Ginny tried desperately to re-orient herself.

First, she felt the hard bench, flat and uncomfortable against her bum. Slowly, the feeling in her cramped arms came back, followed by a tingling buzz of blood, long deprived, rushing back to her starved cells. Her forehead felt hot and clammy against a smooth, sticky surface. And yet, there was an odd sense of displacement in her body. She felt segmented; as if she had burst into a thousand, separate pieces, and flung across a wide, two dimensional space. She wondered if she had finally fallen asleep on the tower and fallen over.

_That would explain the stickiness, s_he thought.

There was a faint rustling sound to her left. Ginny blinked open her eyes. A familiar flood of stranded scarlet, golds and brazen metals assailed her vision.

_Hm. Not dead, then. _

And then it all funneled down into coherence. The Great Hall. Lunch. Exhaustion_._

"Ahem." Ginny jumped at the sound and turned. Across the table, to the left, sat Harry, arm curved, holding open a book in front of him, while he wrote on a tall scroll of parchment with his other. The slight furrow between his brows along with the shadow of concern darkening his green eyes greeted her like an old friend.

"Hullo, Harry," Ginny said, blearily.

"Hey, Gin." His tone was wry, studying her. "You okay? I think you missed your class."

Blinking several more times, to get maximum functioning back to her sight, Ginny frowned at the upside down watch on the lone plate in front of her. He was right, Care of Magical Creatures had started ten minutes ago. Ginny teetered for a moment in uncertainty, wondering whether, in her fatigue, it was worth it to freak out, but after reassuring herself that it was Hagrid, and a double lesson, she decided to relax once more. To Harry, she shrugged. "I'll be heading there now, then." She smiled, weakly.

The concern in his expression changed, but after gazing at her a bit longer, he seemed to refrain from saying anything more. Ginny held his too-brilliant gaze for a long time, and as she looked and took in the boldly drawn contours of his face, she thought, she'd been here before. Under the damp, stony roof of a very different place, with soaking clothes, and a weak spirit, gazing at him, much rounder faced, and shorter- but the eyes were the same. Her fatigue; his concern, it was the same. She had been here before.

Ginny wonder if he was testing her this time, or if, still, he watched her, trying to gouge out how best to rescue her from the shadows that haunted her steps. Ginny almost smiled at that. It was so like Harry to drape her in the cloaks of a victim. It was so like him to make her a rescue mission.

To never know when it was time to give up.

Did _he _see the ugly scars that stared back at her from the mirror every morning?

Seeing the carefully held back pity just begging to be expressed in his eyes, she thought he might. The open and affectionate softness in them made her think, perhaps not. Perhaps he saw the weight she carried with her, but Ginny was sure beyond belief that he did not see how she clung to it, too. How she relished the pain it gave her like it was her life force.

For the first time in years, an old twinge tugged at her heart; an echo, like a happy sound morphed and muffled through the long tunnel of time. Under his familiar gaze, Ginny felt the winding back of her many shells, and briefly experienced the unburdened nudity of childhood once more. A time when she had seen all the world through Potter-fogged lenses. When every green had been more brilliant than an emerald gaze. Every green untouched by the sinister shade of Tom's green ink.

Harry's head cocked, something subtle deepening in his expression, and Ginny forced herself to look away. Hands fluttering over her papers, gathering them together, Ginny tried to pretend not to see the emotion he displayed so plainly on his face.

"You should sleep more, Gin," he said quietly, finally.

"I do." Ginny whispered, a coil of guilt twisting in her gut.

"Alright, but-." He breathed. "Alright, Gin."

Ginny felt her throat tighten. Keeping her face averted, she settled for nodding and finally, having managed to get all of her stuff together, she said, "See you," and escaped.

*******

So now that the pretense was broken, he watched her back.

Standing alone amid the chaotic peace of the owls, Draco's gaze, as he had stood there tying the ribbon holding his letter to the grey owl's leg, drew to the cluster of heads gathered around the mammoth figure of the groundskeeper, down in the grounds. Sharp, excited sounds reached him from the distance and, perhaps, hoping for a distraction, he'd spared them a glance. The smooth roll of parchment sat stiff against his palm, coldly waiting to be sent. Little bobbing faces in the distance winked at him through the many gaps between the vines that covered the Owlery openings.

Gryffindors.

Immediately, Draco's eyes had sharpened, his eyes roving over the many heads, searching, unknowingly. His fingers holding the thin owl leg faltered.

-

"Hey Gin." A hard shoulder smacked against hers. It was Colin. "I think you have an admirer." Blinking, Ginny turned to look at where he was nodding his head to.

The castle seemed eerily deserted; its dozens of balconies, and windows shadowed and unpopulated while everyone lurked deep inside it's walls. Amid the dappled grey walls, and the shifting shadows, she did not see him at first. The shadow of the brambled vines that wound round the woodwork, scantily framed the large opening of the Owlery.

Floating feathers could barely be discerned through each of the boxes, inside, never settling, always at the edge of flight as they hovered around and contorted his outline, giving him withering wings. It was as one of them caught at the silvery-white hair of her distant observer that Ginny finally made him out. At peace, for once, with a scene around him, Ginny almost smiled, experiencing the now expected catch in her breath as her eyes took in his otherworldly beauty.

Draco lifted one hand, distracted, to pick the feather off, and Ginny wretched her gaze away as quick as she could.

Beside her, the lanky blond snorted. "And a ferrety one, too."

-

And then like a splash of cool air in the summer heat, the red had washed over his eyes. Draco stilled, and the happy torch of bright hair pinned his feet to the stone ground. From the distance, shining unabashed, ever stubborn in the patient sunlight, it flicked imaginary fingers at his will, winding around it until it was obscured from him.

Draco felt a sudden and irrational urge to smile. The tightened strain in his shoulders, knotting down his back and weighing him down seemed to loosen, and relax. The owl behind him hooted questioningly and fluttered its wings for attention, but Draco paid it no mind, forgetting all about the letter. Comfortable with the knowledge that this time he was truly free to watch her, and she had no idea, he shed off all the tiny, knotted weaves of protective denial. Underneath it all, allowing the whispering secrets to leak out, he thought her sight made him ache.

And it was such a good ache; an endorphin rush after a lifetime of pain. She was sunshine in rain; a sad, bleak and bashful warmth.

She turned her head a little in his direction but quickly turned away. He watched her mouth moving silently, none of the soft sounds he was used to coming out, and felt a rush of disappointment. She shook her head, hidden weaves of gold and rust peeking out of the curls. Even from afar, he noticed the blush of freckles running like a bridge over her rose. He could see how the slight chill in the air had shaded it pink. He saw the ends of her pulled, and worried sleeves were frayed and faded, but still, the buzzing warmth spreading through his chest would not go away, as he looked on.

-

Forcing herself to breath normally, Ginny worked a smile through the frozen muscles of her face. She tried to make it look playful. Feeling fidgety, Ginny felt as if she had just narrowly escaped something.

Ginny was so painfully aware of the fragility of what held him to her. The fragility of _him. _And suddenly, a fierce protectiveness surged through her.

"Leave him alone," she mumbled, before she could think. Biting her tongue, she added a shrug to make it sound absentminded. She could feel the shocked stillness settling over the boy beside her, and dared a glance through her lashes up at him.

Collin was staring at her with a sardonic, questioning look. Ginny wanted to kick herself.

"Leave _Malfoy _alone?" he asked, unbelieving. Swallowing the fervor threatening to spill out within her, Ginny just shook her head.

-

He wondered when red hair had become so beautiful.

The corner of her mouth played with a sad smile. Her eyes, bright and shadowed dipped and rose with the moving world around her, acting as faux portals to the thoughts secreted inside her head. Watching her surrounded, amid the busy stream of her familiars , Draco could not help but notice the small circle of berth that was created around her. Even in the middle of all her housemates, she stood alone.

She was an island surrounded by land.

Watching her, Draco wonder if she saw it too. Watching the delicate, painted smile on her face, the quiet stillness about her, while her friends' shrieks and voices wove on, he knew that she carried the lonely weight of that space, every day of her life. The lies she hid behind were almost as elaborate as his own. The thought made Draco feel lighter. He realized that as he discovered the many faces of her carefully hidden sorrows, he forgot a little more about his own.

Allowing the hesitant, bewildered smile to stretch more fully across his face, Draco realized: it hadn't.

_Only Weasley-red hair._

-

Collin scoffed, shaking his head with barely contained anger. "And I wish he would leave _you _alone."

She said nothing. 'It's none of you business,' she wanted to say, just as angrily. 'You don't know him.' But that sounded as if _she _did, and of course, that was not true either. The truth was that she was tired of knowing people so inside out, everywhere she went. She was sick of knowing so much and never being known. She was sick with a claustrophobic sickness, and yet she was also so alone.

She only wanted someone to watch her from afar. She only wanted the air to swirl free around her, letting her breathe; not containing her, not pushing her back, aside, protected, closeted, hidden-. Invisible.

_Tom..._

Ginny swallowed her words and tried to smile through the sudden jolt of fear at the thought.

_No. _She needed a broken angel, fallen so that all he could watch was her.

In the private corners of her heart, she whispered, _and I wish he will never leave me alone, again. _

-

The shadows in her face wrapped around and suffocated her radiance. Watching them play at the corners of her eyes; in the soft line of her mouth, Draco basked in their pain.

She was so flawed, so cut up and bruised that she took his pain away with her. Gathering them to herself, she asked for no payment, and for this he felt his attachment grow.

That was, Draco realized, the trouble about flaws. By nature, they suggested unwant, as if perfection really was what everyone sought, and a flaw was the discarded, smudged, forgotten stroke. But flaws were like beacons in the unlined horizon. They were unforgettable, and impossible to find again once lost. Flaws made locks and keys out of hearts.

Frightened by this thought, Draco quickly removed his gaze, turning at last to the hyper bird on his shoulder.

-

"Nevermind," Ginny said instead. "Shouldn't we be grabbing one of those?" she nodded, indicating the Blast-Ended Skrewts Hagrid had collected in a box at the front. All the other pairs in the class had already got one, and were in various stages of nursing burns, cuts, and bites, around them. Collin glanced around, gave her another suspicious look and proceeded to the exploding tank.

When he had turned his back, Ginny took a deep breath, braced herself- _for what? He won't stop coming- _and turned around to look straight at the owlrey.

There was a flicker of movement like the tail of a cloak and the owlery door, beyond the feathers shut.

A magnificent ash owl with a green ribbon trailing from one leg flew over her, heading south.

-

As Draco hurried to leave the owlery, he paused for a moment by the door.

-Perhaps, that was the price, after all, he suddenly thought. The payment she asked was so incredible that he had not even recognized it. With every ridge, and every scar, she had got him caught and sewn closer to her. There was a mask there for him, too, Draco realized. A promise that one day she would return all that she took from him in her sidelong glances, her careful, fragile stance, bidding for time.

Keeping her distance. She told him softly, in her cool voice, about choices every night, as if there was a choice where she was involved as well. As if she had never meant to lure him in.

But of course, that was another lie. Another trap.

The door behind him shut with a snap. Bidding, Draco waited for the resentment to surface, for the joyfully aching world to darken again at having been trapped, once again.

But then the clear chiming of her laughter pierced through the wood, and the empty corridor rang with the sound, and the world seemed to come alive with all of it's tragic glory, in Draco's eyes.

***

Please Review!


	5. Chapter 5 PART I

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**Disclaimer: I do solemnly swear...**

**A/N: Thank you .Aisuru for the WONDERFUL comment. It totally blew my sails across the glittering seas, and now I am back, thanks to you. This chapter is dedicated to you. :)**

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**Chapter 5: PART I**

Really, it had been inevitable, all along. Still, there was a slight factor of surprise. To say the least, neither of them could have expected the night to have gone as it did, but in hindsight; when the moment had come and gone, and the two of them had stared at each other, face to face at last, it was inevitable.

It snowed, that night, and something in the strange routine of their relationship was jarred.

Having at long last, come to an uneasy truce with his own turmoiled emotions, and admitted his unwavering interest in this strange, haunted Weasley, for the first time, Draco found his feet restlessly tapping the lush carpet of the common room, awaiting his flight up. Tonight's meeting would mean something more. Tonight's meeting, would decide it for him.

In the back of his mind, the ominous presence of his father darkened and swallowed his fears whole. He felt... resigned; at a strange peace with himself.

Like the moment when he had resolved to step off the ledge and let death take him, so long ago. At the very beginning.

Like when he had watched, from a distant, quiet place, the slow carving of dark ink lacerated through the flesh of his arm; coiling and biting, sinking deeper, to become one with him.

Draco understood, finally, the irreversable nature of the inevitable.

She had stopped him that day from stepping his life away, and finishing it all for sure. Now, the fate of all that he had to inflict rested on her. It was the way the universe chose to function. A magic beyond the likes of which he was used to told Draco this: he could do nothing without the teardrop image of her crouching figure in the sky, glancing at him in strange acknowledgement. Seeing _him, _even from the distance. And approving.

Or not. Or she would choose to not understand his predicament- all the reasons he _had _do as his father bid; he _had _to do as the searing weight of the snake on his arm demanded. And then... Draco did not know what would happen. But he imagined, like as not, she was probably the only person in he universe at this point who could tell him "no", and he would still hear.

Not for the first time, he wondered why this was so. Why she mattered at all. Since _when_ had she mattered, at all.

But that changed nothing. And if Draco was anything, he was realist.

And it didn't change anything.

Beause he was _bound_ to have acquired an infatuation for the littlest Weasley; he was _bound_ to have felt the call of her blaring reds in his bones. It was in the way she cast her net. It was in the way she held her head. Draco was alone- so painfully alone in the universe, and had been for so long, that he was bound to have found someone, before the end. Bound to have grasped and grappled at the sea of faces around him until he had felt the hook catch somewhere. She was a a poet's muse in a sea of flatteries. The real question was: how could he have missed her for so long, at all?

And she was torn; so broken and badly mended. So full of holes and shadowed crevices, that even as he tried to withhold his horror, he thought, he was bound to have seen her. Just as even now, he was bound to watch her.

Until time passed, their little moments of nothings and everythings accumulated, and he was so bound to her- she, so bound to him, that it had to rest on her. He hadn't started this. And now, when her quiet voice entered the darkness of his dreams, and told him _no, _he would leave it all up to her.

Forcing himself to stop his tapping and closing his eyes, Draco sunk into the lazy boy, and let the recent image of Ginny Weasley by the gamekeeper's hut wash over him.

_Damn you, Weasley, _he thought to himself. But, inside, he had already decided: Tonight, Draco would ask her a question.

Across the castle, up a narrow stairway, around the curve of the corridor of portraits, inside the cluttered walls of her tower, Ginny sat by the fireplace, and thought along the same lines.

It was unhealthy, she imagined, how much she thought about him. He was, by principle, an enemy of all she stood for. She was a Weasley; poor, liberal minded, with a large, aloof family, and gushing with simpleton, homely sentiments about the world. He was a Malfoy. She was a Gryffindor; brave, forefront of a war against ill-ideals and brimming with courageous spirit- and he was a Slytherin; shrewd, opportunistic, and a survivor. Surely, it was unhealthy, having such a relationship. Surely, at a surface level, it was _wrong. _

But then Ginny pictured him- not for the first time- on the tower, and something hard and cold-edged would streak across her chest, and it would all mean nothing: the political scale, the social ranking, the emblem of ancestry. In the end, the bond that tied them, of abstract remoteness, the forlorn lines running through their lives seemed to bridge every other gaping chasm. For now at least, from this distance, it was okay.

She could see him, without seeing him. She could close her eyes, and picture every graceful line of his pale face, as she could never remember being able to do with anyone. In her bones, she could hear him breath. She felt light headed, warmed and tipped in a surreal sense of vertigo, with just a flash of his face in her mind.

And it was an infatuation with the Face of cruelty.

There was no doubt in Ginny's mind that she was inlove with him. It was only what "him" stood for, to her, that slightly obscured matters. She loved him for all the wrong reasons. She loved him with a relish, for duplicity of his nature: an aristocratic braggart, with the gift to cut anyone with a word, silent and forlorn at a tower ledge, bleeding with all the cuts of his own. He was vile, and cowardly. And Justice had served his true. Ginny loved that.

She loved that he was so tied to her, from so long ago. A boy who's father had caused her to become the girl she was. A boy whose father had caused him to become who he was.

They were so ugly, them both. And so repulsively the same. Quiet, and gathering all the pity and love they could to themselves, but ultimately so hollow inside.

She loved that. She loved him like her worst enemy.

So, really, nothing had changed at all. Ginny doubted anyone would have been too surprised at her choice. She had always been the odd, masocistic type.

There was something grounding, in finally choosing. A kind of grounded sense that Harry could never give her. Harry was too-much everything; he was too good, too positive, too brave, too clean. And she was very little of anything anymore. Threadbare. And it was so grounding, _so perfect _to fall in love with porcelin.

She allowed herself the liberty of such thought tonight, in the effort to keep from gazing out at the flurried world through the window behind her. The plagued sky and the tightly whirling air brought all sorts of other thoughts that she would much rather not think of. With the wind keening so softly though the thick glass, she felt trapped in her tower. The walls looming around her and threatening to collapse over her... Spinning and crumbling, as she slipped through the cracks of the earth and into the dimension of another; darker Hogwarts...

Levelling her breathing, Ginny fixed her blind stare to her lap where she clutched a handfull of quills.

It had snowed the night Tom had come to break her, too. So, really, she should have known all along what would follow.

This year there was no Terry Boot to climb into bed with, and when he had fallen asleep, to step out to the serene ledge of the Ravenclaw tower. This year, there was no convinient injury from the quidditch pitch, to spend the first snowy nights before the break at the hospital wing. This year, there was no Dean Thomas to frolick in the Astronomy Tower with. There were no excuses, no places to go; no escape.

Outside, the hard, crystalline flecks of white ice changed direction and pattered against the glass. The person on the chair beside her's got up and pulled the drapes closed, muffling the sound.

Ginny tucked herself more fully into the bend of the over stuffed chair arm, taking deep breaths, letting the small noises of the students around her wash over.

She had been scared, so scared. But then that was nothing new. Perhaps it was because she had been scared for so _long _that things unfolded as they did. But for right then, that moment that found her rigid and suppressing shiver upon shiver in the midst of all her house mates, meandering about her, unnoticed, Ginny drifted off to sleep for the first time in a very long while.

The excercise of fear demanded its toll, it seemed. And between the sore fatigue that seemed to cling to her bones at all times, and the lazy warmth; the dancing light, the soft sleepy smells of the common room, he was bound to come back. So, the last thing she was aware of was a far away, heavy weight being tucked over her, and then Ginny dreamt.

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**Reviews make me warm and fuzzy inside. **


	6. Chapter 5 PART II

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**Disclaimer: I do solemnly swear...**

**A/N: Still continuing this chapter. I am releasing it in increments because that is how I get it out of my hair, and spur myself on to move on to the rest. I have MAJOR exams this week, but I am hoping, in all my little breaks to write up more of this, and let it out. :)**

**My respectful HOLLARs to Anna McNarin for the review. Means alot. Really, I read your blurb on your profile Speaking of which, I wholeheartedly agree: Real men wear kilts. I also have to ask: Craig Ferguson?!?!?**

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****Chapter 5-PART II**

The moment Draco stepped off the moving staircase that had led him to the Astronomy Tower, the truth- and the despair- hit him like a sheet of ice.

It was snowing. She would not come if it snowed, he thought. His question would remain unanswered, and he had been resting all of it on her. Something inside him that had been coiled up and tight with suspense suddenly seemed to give, and the air that rushed out of his mouth felt like a sob. Or a punch in the gut.

He felt... betrayed. He felt like she had owed him this. She owed him, for noticing his stumbles during the day, for watching his near-falls every night. And he had needed her so desperately this one night; needed her, because he had expected her to be there so fervently. To see her malencholy, serene gaze from the corner of her eyes, talking to him.

With hesitant steps, Draco moved closer towards the opening where he normally perched, not wanting to go any further, but not able to help himself either. She wasn't there, he already knew, but some sliver of defiant hope still pushed him on. As if, maybe if he took slow enough steps, if he wiped all disappointment from his system, denied it, denied her, she would be there again. As unexpectedly, and as breathtakingly as on that first night.

The world outside was a flurried torrid of greys and whites, desperately erasing all traces of the black night, and Draco's shoulders sagged. At the back of his jeans, he could feel the heavy weight of his Malfoy signet ring.

It seemed, Draco thought, drawing himself up and taking a deep breath to resore his wounded dignity, that he would have to bear it alone tonight. Suddenly, the thought made him laugh. Mouth twisted bitterly, Draco remembered that his Malfoy-ness had always been for him to bear. Had he thought for a moment that Weasley carried it for him all these nights?

False hopes, is what his little Weasley was. A distant picture of a girl that did not really exist; mute and enticing, and nothing but a mirage upon a too-dark sky. Peeking a glance over at the Gryffindor tower, just distinguishable through the whipping blizzard, Draco wondered if he could conjour her up at will.

He did not need an answer so badly. Just... a glance. One second of her image, to imprint in the back of his lids, and to be done forever.

He only wished to see her. Once. In case it was the last time.

For, without her refusal, without her disapproving little frown, peeking at him through the unruly locks of her hair, and then shyly turning away, he could not refuse. He could not ignore the nagging heed of the tattoo on his arm. The ring in his pocket.

He could not find his will. The one he seemed to have lost, so long ago, somewhere beneath the fine layered grime of the Mansion grounds, before he knew how.

_The Dark Lord is getting impatient. _

Oh, how Draco hated that voice. How much he wanted to rebel against it, lash out, give up everything and just _leave. _To break off, refuse, and throw the ring at their faces. At the snake's own face. But Draco did not _know_ how. He was trapped by his own priviledges. Threaten a poor man to eviction, and it might annoy him; threaten the rich man and he would massacre masses, and rise more against you to prevent his sentence.

He was trapped. -Between the benign, infuriating twinkling gaze of a foolish old man, and the red orders, and green writing of others. So much more powerful others.

How could he say no?

One old wizard less in the world- but he had seen his time, lived his life. How could he say no? To be at the forefront of a War won, staring down from his pedestal, at Potter's hating, naive greens; free at last, to roam, and remove himself, to wander the vacant earth, so dead and forever dark. But as it should be. Without the mudbloods. Not that Draco had anything personal against mudbloods- but at least that would be an end. One way or another, it had to end. So, what if half the world collapsed? If they all died, and that was the only thing that would bring the quiet; It was only death.

It was only death, and they would be free.

And he would be free.

How could he say no?

The snake could live on in it's own waste.

But before he began, before he plunged his hands in that dark abyss from which his entire being cringed so miserably, Draco only wished to see her once more. Her eyes, understanding, and unjudgmental, once more.

Before they, too, darkened into the same hate he met with in the eyes of her friends every day.

_Once more, _he thought, and then Draco did something upon pure impulse. Legs restless, and eyes unwavering from the distant, faded tower, his hand reached into his cloak pocket and pulled out his wand.

In the darkness he whispered, "_Accio _firebolt."

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...There was a tunnel; a downward, sloping tube of space that caught at her feet, legs and body, swallowing her down. With long habit of surrendering to the abandon, Ginny slid down, down, down, awaiting, numbly, the bottom of the hole.

And then the nightmare decended.

Far too suddenly, she was at the bottom of the verticle passage, through its winding path, and sitting at the center of the high ceilinged vault of the Basilisk.

_Welcome, my pretty pet, _his voice caressed her from head to toe, in a rush of shivers.

She was in the chamber, trapped and sapping. Her body felt weak, and heavy; paralyzed. A sultry, honeyed voice nibbled at her ears, but try as she might, she could not turn away.

It was hard for her to see at first, with the air so flurried with ribbons of black somethings flashing before and around her. It did not take long for Ginny to see it for what it really was, for she had been here before. Words, letters, inky scrawls; all her secrets, dreams and passions were whipping in the air around them for the universe to see.

_March 3rd- I was in the bathroom all day and no one even noticed. Tom... there is something wrong with me, I don't even remember what the Burrow looks like in the spring anymore. I was trying to remember today and I couldn't, and George was talking about the time I hexed Charlie but I can't remember, I don't even remember what Charlie looks like. I used to love Charlie. I do, I still love him, but why can't I remember. ..?_

Vaguely, Ginny wondered if Harry was here at this point, and if he could read all her searing, naked truths. If he could read the helpless childishness of her squiggles; her innocence, the last of it as it faded, with each entry, away.

But then there was no time to wonder.

Tom was there, and as he entered her spirit, he _demanded _all of her thoughts and attentions. What he wanted was her, and what Tom wanted, he always got in whole.

He did not need her little girl moanings. He did not need her devotion or spirit. Tom needed, he _craved, _all that she had to give, like a Dementor craved the happiness in the air. So, coldly, his hand slid in , curving around her waist, and snatching with long fingers, at the the breaking fabric of her soul. His lips were there at her earlobe, curving down to her jawline; slick, pointed tongue darting out, and sliding against the side of her throat, as if he was ready to devour her.

Ginny shivered, exactly the way she had that night. She shivered in cold, in horror, and in leaking, emptying dignity, and closed her eyes as she had every one of those nights.

But he never left. He laughed, because he loved how limp and soiled she lay in his arms. He loved how much she bore just for him, how much of herself she so foolishly, so helplessly gave; how she hated him, and as he wrapped his darkness around her, she hated with a fear, the rest of the world as well.

_"I can't remember anything that I did after charms class. I just opened my diary to talk to Tom again. He's the only one who understands- Tom?"_

Nose plunging in the hollow pool of her pulse, he breathed in her fear.

_April 14th- A snake! I saw the snake- Tom, what is this? I'm so scared. I'm constantly shaking, make it stop, please stop-April 26th- Tom, stop it please, it's hurting me, I don't want to anymore, it hurts please stop tom-_

The words with their thin snaking limbs wound around her. She was trapped and her heart speeded up. And he was there again. Cold, unceasing; hard, smooth fingers unrelenting on her skin. She kept flinching, and if only she could move, kick, flail, hit him in the sneering, hungry face- to get away, but there was no way out- that was what he said:

_"No point in struggling my little spit fire. There is nowhere to go,"_

But no! She had to struggle, she had to stop him, she hated, _hated_ his insistent, greedy touch on her skin, her throat, her eyes, her navel- _"no!"_

The inky words plunged into her mouth, their bitter, coppery taste coating the inside of her mouth, seeping bitter, tangy, metallic, into her throat, and she was choking, coughing, gagging-

And the fingers kept moving on, biting now, harder and something inside her was breaking, shredding and disappearing. Her spirit, as he sapped the life out of her-

The words continued to smudge the walls, winding and moving and pouring endlessly around her-

_February 8th- I hate you Tom!_

And then the ink was everywhere, overlaying line over line until she couldn't see anything around her anymore. She could still feel him, but she _always _felt him. -But the ink, it just kept running, and her heart ached from beating so hard, and she was scared- so scared, again, and the world was slowly being washed away with the black ink and then there was nothing but darkness, inky pitch black suffocating her, all alone in a tiny world with only him-

_Only Tom and Ginny now, my pet._

"No!"

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**Please, if you read this, be so kind as to drop a word. The more constructive the better, but I am open to random punctuation marks of joy thrown at me, as well. :)**

**Review!**


	7. Chapter 5 PART III

**Disclaimer: Ya'll know the drill. I don't own Harry Potter- surprise!**

**A/N: Holy gosh darn it's been a while! You know what happened??? So you know where you save your documents, and then you upload the chapters from those documents? Well, apparently those things have a shelf life, after which they magically disappear. So imagine my surprise when I open my account up, ready to see my 12 or so documents, all nicely underway, awaiting a conclusion and a tweak here and there, and see them all gone! I am not even woeing the loss, because I honestly can't remember what it is that I may have lost to begin with! But, hey! I had this on an actual WORD FILE for once, ha!, so here you are. Out of my hair, and in display for your... maybe not pleasure. Scrutiny, then?**

**Enjoy.

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Part III  
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It was really cold. Draco had not realized just how cold blizzards got, but the element of flying definitely added to the experience. His cloak was charmed to heat, and cool off, judging by temperature, so Draco assumed that he was probably not in any immediate danger of death. His hands and ears on the other hand were separate matters. Flying against the furious wind, they felt bitten to the point of numbness. There was an ache that was steadily spreading at the very edge of his perception, sheeting under the skin of his face until he thought his eyes had frozen into a permanent squint.

As much as he realized his own rash stupidity, however, Draco found his frozen face smiling more carefreely than it had in a very long time. The thrill of fighting against the impassive, colossal tide of the elements, and flying on unscathed brought Draco's blood to life. He could feel it singing in his veins, rushing against his ears in a steady beat, making the white world look like it was shining around him.

The tower he had watched for so long began to loom closer, its many windows glowing in hazy warm boxes against the grey stones. Draco leaned down on his broom, slowing it down to a halt as he neared the stone ledge. Drawing up the the misted glass, Draco reached out one gloved hand to carefully wipe against the glass, and peered inside.

.. curled against the edge of the sofa, with a patched felt throw tucked over her, slept Ginny Weasley.

The sight, for a second, took his breath away.

Watching her closed lids, the serene stillness of her expression, Draco seemed to deflate. The fire which had so erratically spread through him flickered to a soft warmth and lingered, reminding him at once, how cold he was, and how much she was worth it, just to see her there, hair flickering softly to the flames of the hearth. Leaning against the window sill, Draco watched her, unable to help himself.

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"No!"

She woke up with a start not knowing where she was.

There was something heavy on top of her and she jerked beneath it, arms and legs struggling to throw it off. Throw him off. A scream of pure terror lodged not far behind her throat. But long habit made her keep her jaws shut, and after the initial twitch of consciousness, Ginny held herself very still, allowing reality to slowly seep in and wash cool relief over her beating heart.

Ginny opened her eyes, and the first thing she thought of was Draco Malfoy.

Her breathing immediately picked up again, her heart clambering, this time in guilt, inside her chest. Pushing herself up with her elbow, Ginny pushed off the throw and uncurled her legs, swinging her feet over to the ground. _Draco. _

A gnawing sense of disappointment seemed to pull at the base of her stomach, and eyes bleary, Ginny staggered over to the window. She had not checked on him tonight. She had not seen the open sky, and enjoyed the freedom of unsaid words with him, and the leaden, shocked, magnitude of her sense of loss wiped away the last traces of _him _from her mind.

She had not been thinking. There had been nothing in her mind of instincts that could have prepared her, but as Ginny pulled away the drapes, what she saw did not surprise her in the least.

There was Draco Malfoy; eyes closed, sitting at the end of her window ledge, cushioned with his broom upon a rising pile of snow, with a barely large-enough cloak wrapped around him. The brown of his clock melted in with the rusted colour of the sill, and the pale cast of his delicate features, made him seem to perfectly insync with the snow. Ginny watched, the clambering in her heart slowing and picking up with an odd tempo._ Draco?  
_

She really was not shocked; but she stood there, still as the rocky towers in the wind, anyways. Because his proximity overwhelmed her. As he lay, curled up there, his expression so trusting, so abandoned, as if he had known she would come; as if he trusted that the wind would not sweep him off-

He took her breath away.

Slowly approaching the latch, her hand trembling as it shot up to unlatch it, she took in his bruising lips, the frost on his dark lashes brushing against the tops of cold reddened cheeks. Ginny swallowed the pain that blossomed in her chest at how painfully beautiful everything about him really was.

The window unlatched, and she swung it open. He was not even a foot away from her now, and she wavered with indecision.

_Indecision? Of course I have to get him in here, he's going to freeze! _

But why was he even here?

Because she had not checked on him tonight.

Did he care as much as she did? Ginny wondered. Then, feeling a flush of discomfort rising, she brushed away the thought and instead pondered on how to get him inside without rousing him.

Uncertain, she pulled out her wand, trying to rack her brain for a carrying spell which could carry a fully grown man. Wingardium Leviosa? No, that spell was too erratic. What if she smashed his skull against pane above. That would definitely not do.

Ginny debated carrying him by hand, but had an abrupt image of losing grip and having him sailing down into the darkness below, and that didn't seem to do either. Finally, as it seemed, there was no way of preventing a confrontation, she called really softly, "Draco?"

_Malfoy! _her mind cried, scandalized, _It's Malfoy! _But Ginny's entire consciousness had narrowed elsewhere. For before her, closer than ever before, she watched the beast transforming in the snow. The soft face, the grazing, dark lashes transformed. The skin, it turned translucent, and pale; the lips, they gathered hard, pained shadows around them. And the lashes- they turned charcoal and then silver, parting bottom from up, and finally, shining in the same ashen lines as the emerging irises beyond them.

Time slowed down for Ginny, and she held her breath like she when the sun would rise.

And then, just like that, the inevitable was there. He was up, crouching alertly at the sill, looking up at her with all the austere dignity he could manage, and she, with her hand still hesitating on the latch looked blankly on, her eyes only slightly too wide.

Her voice- _"Draco"- _seemed to hang in the air between them. Did he need an invite in? Was this like when Dracula was invited into the house, and all was damned and doomed ever after? Ginny's mind did several cartwheels of wild-flying thoughts. Despite the fact that he was awake, and looking at her through the mask of Draco Malfoy, the Prince of Slytherin House, she could not wipe away the image of him sleeping at her window sill. Hell- for all his hauteur, Ginny reminded herself, he was _still _at her window sill.

_He _was at _her _window sill.

And then, the still moment broke off, and a breeze of warm air released from behind her and gusted into the swirling chill outside. Blinking, Ginny saw as it touched his perfectly carved features, and in its glow, brought him to life once more.

She realized that maybe this time, she was not here to comfort him, because this time he was here for her. It was unspoken, as unspoken and unplanned, and entirely wrong as it ever was- but in its unexpected, inevitable way-- here he was. And he was not Tom.

And that was important, thought Ginny. That was important. And he was here, at her window sill, looking up at her.

Tilting her head fractionally to the side, she watched this beautiful caricature of a snowflake, and smiled.

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**A/N: Two options here: either for the next chapter I just go to what happens next, the next day, with brief references to how this night might have gone. OR, for all you saps out there, to actually describe some kind of, um, descriptive account of their strange meeting, and one on one interaction? Please tell me as quick as you would like an update. Thanks!**


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